Ephemeral Artificiality
by Shissuru Urufu
Summary: Replicas of bitbeasts have already been attempted. Now it's time to try replication of the blader. But an imitation blader thinks more than an imitation beast and what happens when the replica thinks too much? Be warned: this story contains one strange OC


Heyla, Urufu-san here. Thought I might make a quick edit just to clear up a few things. First things first:-

Disclaimer: If I owned Beyblade I believe I would be a lot more successful and rich than I currently am. Since I am neither rich nor successful we can therefore assume that I am not the owner and this is purely for my own satisfaction. Good enough?

Right, I'm going to make one thing clear, as I did leave it rather open to speculation with my earlier lack of introduction. This is u not /u a one shot. This is going to become a multi chaptered story once I get a couple of kinks worked out of the storyline. If you like it, please bear with me and the subsequent chapters will start to appear.

Hope this has sorted any queries you might have had. If not, feel free to send me a note and I'll be happy to enlighten you. Now, enjoy.

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"What are you?" This question had been asked before. Over and over, a relentless drumbeat at the back of the mind. A reminder. A reminder of what you are; not what you think you are, what you appear to be, but what they have created you to be. What are you is what they wish for you to be. What are you is the trigger, the trigger for that litany, taught as prayers are to the unthinking children of the religious, which spells out your purpose; proves the lesson of your nature is ingrained as deep as any may touch from without. What are you?

"I am a weapon, to be used as the wielder sees fit. A tool in the hands of the powerful to help them bring their plans come to fruition. A sword and a shield; I am everything that will facilitate their victory and all that will ensure their safety. All that I am is theirs, and all that is theirs I am sacrifice for."

In the ill lit gloom beyond the speaker a pair of fingers snapped. The sharp sound broke the monotonous lesson and brought the conscious personality of the speaker back from imposed sleep. A slow blink broke the unflinching stare, and with it the posture softened; no longer the rigid stance and hostile presence commanded by the primordial self, that side of the psyche that runs by instinct without conscious thought. This side was blurred by lethargy and viewed the controller through somnolent eyes.

"Now. Try again."

Slim hands tightened purposefully around the launcher, the dark profile of a beyblade clipped into place with plastic claws. The metal ripcord screamed as it was torn from its resting place, and the blade shot in glancing bursts across the floor. Sparks erupted from its tip with every ricochet until it finally halted in one place, spiralling at a pace just within the range of human sight.

"Call it."

"Dranzer…" hummed the blader's voice, several octaves below what it had been at first. This voice had no power, but hung in a constant buzzing monotone that carried and held the audience, small though it was, despite it's lack. "Rise, Dranzer."

The blade thrummed in response, highlighted in a silhouette of smouldering red that rapidly swelled to a blaze of crimson. From within a high pitched whine rose, growing into a recognisable voice, the enraged shriek of a bird of prey.

"Dranzer!"

The crimson light gathered at the centre of the blade, converging at the bit where it focussed to a single beam of light, colourless in its intensity. It flashed upwards towards the ceiling, the screaming of the incensed bit beast reverberating outwards from its core.

Dranzer did not materialise.

The light collided with the stonework of the ceiling, the violent scream silenced upon impact, and exploded in a shower of red sparks that dissipated before they reached the upraised faces of the spectators.

"You have failed."

The blader made no reply, moving to retrieve the dark blade that lay motionless in its place, silenced in the same moment as the failed bit beast.

"Failure is unacceptable."

Perfection. It had to be perfection. Nothing less than. One mistake was enough to get you evicted from the Abbey, from your life, enough to see them destroy you for your imperfection. The tally now stood at seven for this unfortunate. But perfection couldn't be made from copies. A facsimile of something is not the original. No matter the perfection of the shell, the exactness of the appearance, in the end that was all it was. An imitation was just that; there was no substance behind the duplicate, no core beyond an empty darkness that would only collapse upon itself, the shell quickly sickening without an essence to support it.

"Permission to speak, sir."

"Granted." Expectant, but that would go unanswered. This was not the grovelling apology and pleading request for another chance.

"This bit beast will always be unacceptable. It will always be a failure. Just as I will always be a failure." Lying was also unacceptable. You didn't lie here; they would know and consequences would follow. That said, blunt truth could often be worse when the listener did not want to hear.

"And why would that be?" Dangerously soft, carefully spoken to disguise a mounting anger. Beneath that emotion lay a cautious curiosity, the suspicious consideration that maybe there was a genuine flaw, rather than the simple case of a rebellious trainee speaking out of turn.

There the trainee faltered. How do you explain what can only be known from experience? With the successes of other facsimiles converting the teacher's mind to the belief that such falsities could be perfected, how could the knowledge that all copies would fail in the end ever be imparted? How did you say that success was fleeting and eventually they would all collapse in upon their own warped structures and destroy themselves?

This copy did not even wish to reach perfection. It shrieked the pain of its existence at all hours, never ending screams that echoed within the confines of its cage. When released, it sought only to destroy itself, dashing itself to pieces upon any available surface whereupon it only returned to the cage from which it had temporarily been freed, to rail against its continuation of life until the next instance it was allowed loose.

"That bit beast is not Dranzer." The attempted explanation was faltering at best and wandered quickly into incoherency as far as the teacher was concerned. "It is exact in its likeness but it is not the real thing. It will never be the real thing, and it knows that. Calling it by that name is simply mocking the true Dranzer, and infuriating the replica." Not precisely true, but as close to the truth as could be managed with such troublesome facts.

"So, you are trying to suggest that it would perform better if we named it differently?" The teacher laughed, a harsh sound that grated worse than the false Dranzer's scream. "How childish. Well then, oh wise one, what would you call this beast, if you are so adamant that it is not named Dranzer?"

Names can be made from anything. A random accumulation of letters containing enough vowels could be a name, in the end that's what all words were. This name though, this name needed meaning. Without an essence, the poor demented creature trapped within that dark blade had no meaning, no truth to its life beyond the falsity highlighted by the existence of the original creature. Perhaps a name with meaning could give to a creature that lacked it.

Still, that would be false hope for a false being. A name that represented all that a replica was would be enough. A replica was failure, despair, nothing by the end. But those were not names. They would only cast the same pall over wielder and team. Meaning, deep connotations, but representative of the dark emptiness that they would all come to in the end.

They were warped, distorted, pitiable creatures, beings that brought shame just by their continuation. Shame and dishonour for those who claimed originality.

"I have a name."

"Well?"

The trainee looked at the dark blade, the bitchip with the form of the colourless phoenix silently screaming for release. Was it crying out for a name or fighting against it? Either way, it had a name regardless. "Stigma." You are Dranzer's shame, his dishonour, his stigma to bear.

The teacher smirked. "How very melodramatic. Very well then. And as you are so sensitive on the topic of replicas, do you also wish to be renamed?"

The trainee did not answer. A thousand possibilities ran through an overworked brain Here too was a stigma, but the false Dranzer needed that name. Naming yourself with the term for an emotion was truly melodramatic and who honestly wished to name themselves emptiness? Not a very efficient name. Too many questions involved. Sin perhaps, but that connoted almost too much and so many meanings left the creature seeking just one confused. Perhaps something linking to the original instead?

"Well?" The teacher had no patience for this. He did not understand how important a name was. So easy, when your name could belong to a thousand other people and it did not matter, because you had an essence, no matter how undeserving you were. Boris was such a lucky name.

"Well?" Asked the fortunate man for the second time. "What name will you have? What name suits you better than Kai?"

Any name. Any name at all would be better than stealing the name of the original. But he had a name now. False Kai would also be renamed as was fitting. It would be a name for the original. Cold and brooding, an outcast from this place and self imposed exile from the rest of the world. As they had made him to be. As they had also made the imitation to be. What name do you give the facsimile of an exile?

"Pariah."

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Reviews are greatly appreciated; constructive criticism even more so. Drooling adoration is also acceptable, but non essential and unlikely. Flames will be read once, considered, disregarded and then used to toast Mary Sues. 


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